Compositional Practice (Sustained Attention – 2)

1 week ago May 16, 2018Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg on compositional practice continues from here

Student: Ted (Berrigan) says you write poems when you’re on a retreat.

AG:  Sometimes. If I’m somewhere where I don’t have to do anything, then I tend to write. Like, I wrote a lot up in.. when I went up that week for the seminary I wrote a whole… about fourteen little poems. But that was because they had a poetry reading there, and so I wrote something to read. And I didn’t like the way.. their attitude there, so  I was trying to reflect on, straightforward, you know, fresh, perception, I’ll … Read More

A List of List Poems

December 21, 2017Simon Pettet
AG:  But by this anaphoric rapture, or anaphoric repetition, it {Crashaw’s poem “The Flaming  Heart”] actually builds up to rapture. So this is what Anne Waldman calls “a list poem”, actually, an early list poem. I taught a little poetry workshop this weekend and checked out list poems and the samples I used were (the) thirteenth and twenty-eighth chapters of Ecclesiastes (because there is “..or the golden bowl be broken”), and then I read Christopher Smart, I used “Like to the flaming of a star.”,  the little.. – I used that as a list
… Read More

“The Time of Composition”

November 22, 2017Simon Pettet
 
[Rainer Maria Gerhardt (1927-1954)]
[Ted Berrigan (1934-1983)]
 
[Charles Olson (1910-1970)]
Student: Can I ask you a little bit of an off-the-wall question?
AG: Yes.. Why don’t we leave this time open now for just general…
Student: In our (Ted) Berrigan class  tonight, he said this comment that,  “The time of the composition is the time of the composition”…. (I’ve been trying to understand that)  and I’ve been trying all night.  And he says “Well, you should know that with every poem that you read, (before you start out).
AG: The time of  the composition is the time of the … Read More

Catching Up – Ben Jonson, John Donne)

June 20, 2017Simon Pettet

[Ben Jonson (1572-1637) & John Donne ( 1572-1631)

1980 -Allen was absent and unable to teach one week, so poet Dick Gallup took over his Naropa “Basic Poetics’ class. Allen, on his return, was eager to find out what happened.

AG: What happened with Dick (Gallup)? How was the class?

Student: It was funny

AG: What did you take up?

Student: Everything.. (John Donne),  (Ben) Jonson….

AG: Did he do the Ben Jonson poem on Shakespeare?

Student: No, no, he gave us some background about their lives.

AG: Good, because I don’t know anything about that.

Student He gave … Read More

Ben Jonson – (“Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes”)

March 28, 2017Simon Pettet

AG:   To (Ben)  Jonson. What I wanted to get onto was page two-sixty, “The Triumph of Charis“.. oh no, before that, we did that, those two little epitaphs, on page two fifty-six, two fifty-seven – and, on the way out, (Ted) Berrigan reminded me of a poem he likes particularly, “On Gut”  – “Gut eats all day and lechers all the night..” – page two fifty-six – patting his belly and preaching on gut – “Gut eats all day and lechers all the night;/So all his meat he tasteth over twice;/Andm striving so to double his … Read More

Jim Carroll Workshop – 2

August 14, 2016admin

continuing from yesterday – Jim Carroll’s workshop 

JC: Well, I’m going to play a song that was a great..  one of my favorites… ..Actually, I’m going to play this early Velvet Underground song and then I’m going to play a Phil Ochs song. For some reason, Phil Ochs and The Velvet Underground have this weird connection for me. I mean. they got me into poetry as much as Bob.. well more than Bob Dylan, and as much as Frank O’Hara
[Student/technical assistant plays The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” – JC: “Yeah go ahead..just turn it up here” – Student: The … Read More

New Years Eve (Looking Back on 2013 & Forward to 2014)

December 31, 2013admin

[“Buddhist (and one non-Buddhist) Action Figures” Photograph by Reverend Danny Fisher 2013]

Last posting of 2013, we thought we’d list a few of our “greatest hits” from the past year – January – Nanao Sakaki and Allen Ginsberg singing “Birdbrain” in Osaka, Japan, February – William Burroughs’ 99th (next year will be Burroughs centennial), March – (speaking of nonagenarians) Ferlinghetti was 94, April – the Beats and the rock muse – “Text and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll, May – our Bob Dylan birthday posting, (this year – “The Night Bob Came Around” (and the night… Read More

Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems

November 24, 2013admin

It’s a red-letter day!  (or, to be accurate, a red-and-black letters day, on a plain cream-white background!). Coffee House Press have just published, in one 800-plus single volume, The Collected Poems of Ron Padgett. “Ron Padgett‘s poems”, writes Anne Waldman, “are essential and Ron Padgett is a genius”. She goes on,”His poetry is masterful for its panoramic humanity and mind-stopping verbal wit, its breathtaking power and beauty. We want to stay with the person in these poems all day long, to be changed by the possibilities palpitating from the smallest increments of our existence to the most … Read More

Ted Berrigan’s Birthday

November 16, 2013admin

[Ted Berrigan (1934-1983)]

Ted Berrigan‘s birthday. Ted adored Allen. Alongside the late-lamented Frank O’Hara, he was the one. Ted had this embarrassingly patriotic poetic tribal conceit, and in that context Allen was “the President” of Poetry (analogous to Allen’s own gleeful imaginative “shadow cabinet” – “Vachel Lindsay Secretary of the Interior/Poe Secretary of Imagination/Pound Secty. of Economics..” (Death to Van Gogh’s Ear)

a particular poetic form (a quintessential “New York School” form) – the list poem

OUR FRIENDS Ron: the tight-ass Dick: the insignificant Pat: the dowdy old lady Anne: the superficial sentimentalist Bill: the spoiled … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – 91

June 19, 2013Simon Pettet

 

[The List Poem by Larry Fagin (2000, from Teachers & Writers Collaborative) – cover design by Trevor Winkfield]

Student:  I feel I have to defend myself against (you and) the rest of the class

Allen Ginsberg: Do you have a “self” to defend? – okay, if you insist on having a “self”

Student: Well you said (my comparison with set theory wasn’t so helpful) but why I said that was, that if the members don’t interact, then that means that, just like in a sentence, that means there’s no articulation, (group consciousness) is not being put … Read More